Apex Legends: some Fresh Air in Battle Royales

Apex Legends is a free to play, battle royale shooter that draws inspiration from other genres, particularly the hero shooter. This means that players in this game choose specific characters with unique abilities and characteristics. Unlike typical battle royale games, in Apex Legends players are select specific heroes and work in teams of 3 to beat other players. Teammates that are put down have the opportunity to be revived and continue playing.

The gameplay of Apex Legends

Developed by Respawn Entertainment and released by Electronic Arts, the game takes place in the same universe as Titanfall and takes place 30 years after the events of Titanfall 2. The heroes, that are available for play each fall into a specific class such as assault, defense, support, and recon. Players work in a squad of 3 members and compete against 19 other such similar teams. All the players in the game start with no equipment and are dropped onto the play arena or map via dropships from any random direction.

The players scavenge throughout the map for weapons, ammo, and equipment. Just like typical battle royale games, the map begins to shrink and the 20 teams must fight for survival in an ever-shrinking play-arena. Downed players enter a bleeding mode during which they can revive by their teammates. During this bleed-mode, the downed players can only crawl from one place to another and must wait for their teammates to come and revive them. During this bleed mode, if the player is eliminated, then they drop their equipment and a banner which can be collected by the opponent. After their death, the player can be revived, if their banner is collected by their teammates and taken to a respawn zone under a specific time limit, which is scattered throughout the map. This allows for continuous and more exciting gameplay than typical battle royale titles.

The game is completely free to play and is primarily supported by microtransactions which give players access to various cosmetic details for weapons, voice dialogues, banners, and appearances. New cosmetic items are received after opening loot boxes which are received after spending in-game currency and contain a collection of random rewards. These loot boxes are also freely earned as the players gain experience points and level up. Legend tokens are also obtained by players by playing various matches which are used to unlock new characters in the game and various kinds of cosmetic items.

Reception of the game

The game has been well received by the gaming community. Just after 8 hours post its launch, the game recorded a million unique players. Twenty-four hours later, the number increased to 2.5 million. In three days, the game acquired around 10 million unique players, and by a week’s time, the game had 25 million players with over 2 million concurrent players at any given time. While Electronic Arts saw it’s stock value go down by 13%, the release of Apex Legends changed this phenomenon and EA saw the highest rise in its stocks since 2014.